Video games have some of the characteristics of motion picture film animation. In film terminology the editing together of several shots in a sequence to have a desired effect is called montage. There are several kinds of montage. Parallel montage is alternately cross-cutting between two shots or scenes to provide an illusion of simultaneity. For example, in a chase scene the montage alternates between shots of pursuer and pursued. This illusion of simultaneity is important if characters in different scenes are talking with each other on a telephone, two-way radio, or through a door, or if one character is distantly influenced by a character in another scene, either by hearing what the other character says or by watching what the other character does in the other scene. For example, a character in one scene may be watching another character through a window or on a television monitor or the like and thus be influenced by what the other character says or does.
In the video game art different scenes often alternate. For example, when a character goes through a door, a new scene may appear on the screen. It is also well known for video characters to talk to each other.
It is well known for human players to input choices using any of a variety of input devices such as push buttons, rotatable knobs, pressure sensitive membrane, proximity sensitive pads or screen overlay, light pen, light sensitive gun, joy stick, mouse, track ball, moving a cursor or crosshairs or scrolling through highlighted options, icons, speech recognition, etc.
In the prior art, each choice by the human can be immediately followed by a synthesized voice or digitized voice recording that speaks the words selected by the human player, so the human will quickly adjust to the fact that the spoken words he hears for his side of the dialog are initiated by his fingers rather than his vocal cords.
The characters in prior-art video games and computer games, especially role-playing games, are of two types: player-controlled characters (or player characters) and non-player characters. A player-controlled character is a human player's animated counterpart and does and says what the human player chooses to have him do and say. Non-player characters do only their pre-programmed actions and speak their fixed words. However, non-player characters can be indirectly influenced by a human player, either by responding to an action selected by the human or by responding to what a player-controlled character does or says.